Rubio made the exile story a central theme of his political biography, telling one audience during his Senate campaign, “Nothing against immigrants, but my parents are exiles.” . . . in elevating exile roots over the apparent reality of his parents’ more conventional exodus, Rubio risks setting up a tension point with the country’s Hispanic voters — most of whom are Mexican American and have immigrant friends or ancestors who did not have access to the virtually instant legal status now granted to Cubans who make it into the United States.

At issue, in part, is Rubio’s telling of why his mother returned to Cuba.

In Politico, Rubio wrote: “In February 1961, my mother took my older siblings to Cuba with the intention of moving back. My father was wrapping up family matters in Miami and was set to join them. But after a few weeks, it became clear that the change happening in Cuba was not for the better. It was communism. So in late March 1961, just weeks before the Bay of Pigs Invasion, my mother and siblings left Cuba and my family settled permanently in the United States.

In the 2009 interview, Rubio said his mother went back to Cuba to tend for his grandfather, who had been hit by a bus. (Her father came to the U.S. in the 1950s, Rubio’s office acknowledged to NPR, but went back at some point.)

“And in Cuba at the time, I mean, when you were in the hospital, they didn’t have, like, you know, meals or anything. Your family had to bring the food and they had to take care of you. So my mom went back with my sister and my brother to take care of her father in 1960 and my dad stayed behind working.

“Well, when the time came to come home, the Cuban government wouldn’t let her, so my dad was here in Miami working and desperate because his family – they would let my sister come because she was a U.S. citizen, but they wouldn’t let my brother and my mom come. And they would go to the airport every day for nine months, waiting to be let go and finally were able to come, so it was very frightening. And I think that’s when they knew for sure that that’s not the place they wanted to be.”

Records provided by Rubio’s office show his mother, Oria, entered Havana on Feb. 27, 1961, and she left on March 29, 1961.

Rubio says she never returned, and that his parents could not because of Castro, making them exiles.

So that’s a date problem piled on top of another date problem. Nine months is how long it takes to give birth to a whole new life (power of story!) but nine days or a couple of weeks that just SEEM longer because you’re disillusioned and have a couple of children in tow without Dad around, while understandable, well, not quite so powerful a story.

The Littlest Exile, refused the same open-arms American sanctuary that Marco Rubio's parents exploited for many years and lied to him about? Or The Littlest Illegal, caught by the "center right" law-and-order authoritarian America that Rubio supports, respecting parental rights and enforcing Cuba's claim?

Where did Marco Rubio come down on that controversy and how does he explain the differences today, between his exile power of story and poor Elian’s? FOXy bad-boy Brietbart’s site might offer a clue to the disconnect for Rubio.

Are you an “exile” from a government if you leave years before it comes to power, or would “immigrant” looking for a better life (like those from Mexico viewed suspiciously by his party’s politics?) be more fair and truthful a description? Suppose you Read the rest of this entry »

UPDATE – is the whole Christian Right itself, behaving like “an apocalyptic cult” dragging America toward civil war and if so, wouldn’t that make the Romney-Huntsman cult troublesome not because it’s radical but because it’s not radical enough?

“I’m going to instruct, I’m going to advise people that it is much better to vote for a non-Christian [Mormon Willard “Mitt” Romney] who embraces biblical values than to vote for a professing Christian like Barack Obama who embraces un-biblical values.”

OTOH, Jeff Sharlet’s work to expose a more secretive and cultish “prayer” cell in the nation’s capital, known only as The Family, calling themselves Christians and using that bible to justify their personal and global dominionist politics, isn’t something this man calls a cult or calls out politicians for practicing? Hmmm . . .

It’s time to take political faith seriously. And if doing so strikes you as invasive, unseemly, and irrelevant to the job the candidates are seeking -– well, then, it’s really time to take faith seriously, including its uses and abuses in a democracy where piety and cynicism have long been comfortable companions.

See other author and book-champion videos on the dedicated Banned Books Week youtube channel. Play with the interactive “censorship” map of the US here. (Show your kids it’s not just YOUR backward town or state! It’s everywhere!)

And there are lots of book-burning related posts through the years, most notoriously this and maybe this from 9/11 last year:

On this notorious day as Americans remember, reconstruct and reject both the best and worst of our national identity all at once — because whatever else we the people may be, we’re never easy! — the images of hate in my mind aren’t of burning towers but burning books, burning flags, burning bigotry and yes, burning flesh.

See a more comprehensive collection of links to explore here: Ideas Are Incombustible! (that means you can’t burn ’em up no matter how big your bonfire.)

First day of graduate school! Still chasing the “when you get to [your next degree program] other students will take things seriously and the professors aren’t largely apathetic” unicorn. Here’s hoping I catch it today!

So to date I’ve been her guide to All Things School and the teller of inspiring if fanciful tales, the elusive unicorn evoker at each stage of her thrilling headfirst plunge into Education as Schooling By Choice starting at age 15: Read the rest of this entry »

This year’s Republican primary season offers us an important opportunity to confront our scruples about the privacy of faith in public life — and to get over them. We have an unusually large number of candidates, including putative front-runners, who belong to churches that are mysterious or suspect to many Americans.

Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are Mormons, a faith that many conservative Christians have been taught is a “cult” and that many others think is just weird. (Huntsman says he is not “overly religious.”) Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann are both affiliated with fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity — and Rick Santorum comes out of the most conservative wing of Catholicism — which has raised concerns about their respect for the separation of church and state, not to mention the separation of fact and fiction.

For example, the scientists do not even consider the possibility that the recent decline in church attendance among the citizens of the world’s most powerful nations could be a signal to advanced, god-fearing aliens that we are a decadent and irreligious species who should be wiped out.

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